On This Day: Lauren Fleming, the 2011 March of Dimes National Ambassador, looks up as her brother Corbin touches President Obama’s face during a visit to the Oval Office, Feb. 7, 2012. Lauren is also accompanied by her parents Densel and Nikki Fleming, and her sister Erin (Photo by Pete Souza)

110 Responses to “Early Bird Chat”

Woot!! can’t believe I stole into first place haven’t done that in ages. A little cold this morning -6 with wind chills -28. Been trying to catch up on all the posts, it is daunting. But will keep at it.
Good morning to all the other sleepy heads out there.🙂

Mooorning back atchy’all! Oh, it was cruel, my computer was… saw the ‘Leave A Comment’ and I squeed while ‘puter decided to complain about e’thing else I had opened up. Missed ya by miles Roberta!
Dudette has me well prepared for the 7th! I see amk is still m.i.a. : (

Good Morning, all. This is National Don’t Be Discouraged Day, officially declared by me on February 7. I’m tired of being defeated by winter weather, tired of worrying about congressional races that aren’t happening, tired of stressing over getting my house ready for relatives and tired of being tired. So, I’m declaring an official day when we (I) look on the bright side of everything. I’m going to start by saying that I woke up today with all vital signs functioning and Barack Obama is my president. Anybody else want to join in? The offering of treats (food or beverage) to mark the day will be gratefully accepted.

This is a great idea. I do not know why most of us often focus on the few bad things so that they out-weigh the many good things in life. While I am generally a very content person with a positive outlook (especially now that PBO is in office), I do tend to worry because I have been battling a life-long perfection complex. I have had to learn that good enough is often good enough and to focus on how blessed I am and how we blessed we all are to live in the USA.

PS. A few of my early morning positives: woke up healthy and aching from my spin class workout (this is a good thing), my family is alive, I live in Florida where we barely have Winter, I retired from a difficult job with honor and I am going to spend the day in a warm home, curled up with books and coffee.

Obamacare is making a difference for my family. My two sisters and a sister-in-law in Maryland now have insurance, thanks to Obamacare.

When my second to the oldest sister’s husband died, she lost her health insurance. She suffered seizures and has been hospitalized multiple times. After her husband’s death, she moved in with my second to the youngest sister, who called me regularly about the high cost of my sister’s medication. They were paying out of pocket. One medication, for example, Dilantin, was about $165.00 for 60 pills. Another, Keppra cost around $65.00. But thanks to Obamacare, the co-pay for both medications is now $2.50. Imagine that. Armed with health insurance, she is taking my sister this morning to see a primary care doctor for the first time in a long time. Subsequent visits will include a neurologist, gynecologist, etc., all thanks to Obamacare.

Then there is my baby sister, who was out of work with a 17-year old daughter. They now have Obamacare. And a sister-in-law also have Obamacare.

Yes, Obamacare is making a difference.

One sister suffers from seizures had no insurance, another w/o job had no insurance &sister-in-law all have #Obamacare now in Maryland.

LH, we have to ask ourselves why do they stay mum? Not all of them are employed by right wing bosses, so is it because they are terrified of being named, rejected and mocked by the the DC conservative establishment? Is it some kind of Stockholm Syndrome? Is it Koch brother money? I wish one of them would have the courage to stand up and come clean about the fear that grips them and causes them to lie and become complicit in smearing the best president this country has had since FDR.

Good morning JG. Great questions about why we have such a feckless media. I think they all apply, especially the media Stockholm Syndrome. The James Vega Report referenced below is a real eyeopener.

MSM’s Stockholm Syndrome
By Ed Kilgore

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We’re getting to the point where the media habit of “false equivalency” is inadequate to describe or explain the wilful blindness of so much of the paid political commentariat to the historically unusual (if not unique) extremism of the contemporary Right. So I’m happy to recommend an essay by my TDS colleague James Vega, who suggests many journalists are suffering from a version of the “Stockholm Syndrome” whereby they have become so traumatized by conservative extremism that they will lift heaven and earth to deny its existence and assign responsibility for polarization elsewhere (e.g., to Obama’s “leadership failure”).

Howdy O’s! Great getting up day on this 6.6% job rate day in TODville! That’s down from 6.7% in December. Labor force is 142,000 private jobs which was 82,000 in Dec. The non-farm job number revised up from December to 113,000 from 82, 000. Job participation is 63% vs 62% in Dec. The 6.6% unemployment lowest since Jan 2008.

The Republican Party, as we know it, has ceased to exist. To be sure, there is a national party with the brand “Republican” that fields candidates across the country for national, statewide and municipal elections, but at a real, practical level it is just a corpse that is pulled around by the real men (and they’re almost all men) with power and fat check books.

The Republican Party is Bernie, from Weekend at Bernie’s. It is effectively dead, propped up for convenience sake because some of its legacy assets – ballot access, mostly – are still of value.
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Where Howard Dean designed and implemented a “50 state strategy” for Democrats, Priebus can just cross his fingers and hope the Koch Brothers can win enough races for him.

Absolutely. Although I live in a red district in Florida, when I make my case, this is what I drill home. From jobs to health care. With Gerrymandering, I can’t do anything about Congress, but I am going to work my behind off for Charlie Christ as governor.

I’m in the same situation, Africa–a hopelessly red county. There is absolutely no one to work for here since no one has the courage to run, so whoever gets the Dem nomination for governor in PA, can count on my dedicated help. Let’s hope we both succeed.

We are living in a bizarro propaganda state. My heart breaks. SO we pick up the battle ourselves, talking to friends, family, neighbors wherever and whenever we can. Most people are surprised to learn the truth.

Absolutely jackie and meta! Are people going to shake their head’s and question why the downtick in the unemployment rate is “bad”??? Will that clue them in that they are being played for fools and manipulated? I swear they all think we’re stupid…THAT should be enough to piss America off!

desertflower, why don’t the LA Times, NYTimes, Daily Beast, Reuters, etc. get off their asses and tell people that the jobs numbers could be alot better if it wasn’t for the Republicans. Why don’t they ask the Republicans why they aren’t doing anything to help people fine work? This economy would be alot better if it wasn’t for the do nothing, I’m going to obstruct Obama Republicans, and it would be alot worse if it wasn’t for the hard work of President Obama, his administration, and the Dems. What is disappointing and bad is we have politicians on Capital Hill who will put the welfare of their party over the welfare of this country, specially when a black man is President.

Things are better because of our President, and if he still had a Democratic Congress to work with him a job bill would have been passed by now. Unemployment benefits would be pass, and a raise in miniumum wage would be a done deal.

It is so frustrating, isn’t it?
The labor participation rate is the measurement many economists think is the most important and that number WENT UP. A good thing!
But the MSM/GOP will focus on what can be spun as just another bad day for POTUS.

It’s just unbelievable that this radical tea party minority is able to bring our entire govt. (mostly) to a halt, stopping any decent progress—-a tiny minority of a minority is able to stop immigration reform, jobs bills, UI extension, now talk of holding up debt ceiling agreement again—tying it to OK for Keystone, and any sensible compromise on anything. Something is definitely out of whack with this structure, that this hostage taking, this purposeful damage to our country is possible.

Boehner cant' stand up to radical minority of his own caucus so he holds a press conference to blame Obama. talk abt Profiles in Cowardice

Snowden knows Putin didn’t let him stay in Russia out of the goodness of his heart. You better believe Putin knows everything Snowden does and says. And I’m sure Russia have seen the info Snowden stole from this country. Didn’t Snowden steal the NSA info because he was so concern about the government spying on us, well his new home is spying too what is the hero Snowden going to do about that.

Joe Manchin is our Rick Perry? OK, from a distance but up close a vacant vain self-serving DINO.

When Robert Byrd died Joe Manchin wanted (and eventually got) his Senate seat, but I dimly recall there were Christie-like gyrations in the voting process that gave Manchin the result he wanted and incidentally, kept the Democratic Senate seat which POTUS needed, empty longer than it had to be.

I have never been a fan of certain Democrats, Blanche Lincoln, Marie Landrieu, Kay Hagen, and yes Joe AK-47 Manchin. That being said, I sometimes understand their dilemma. They have to appeal to reddish segments of their constituencies in order to win and keep their seats. Because of that, I give them a pass. After all, it is better to have a Joe Manchin than to have a John McCain. The only one that disgraced himself and I could no longer support was Traitor Joe Lieberman.

I agree with your comments, wholeheartedly, NCLB. We want Democrats in these seats – we don’t have to “like” them. I haven’t liked Joe Manchin since Robert Byrd’s funeral, where he totally disrespected our President (not anything really overt – just obvious enough to catch) so his scum “base” would still “like” him. He’s awful, there are probably skeletons in his closet big time, and he’s no profile in courage, but at least he’s a Democrat.

I got ‘The Butt Plug’ —-> You’re a born adventurer. Some people are afraid to go there, but not you, oh no. You go there, and come back smiling. You know that with great bravery comes great rewards, and while everyone else may either be laughing (or confused) right now, it’s because they just don’t know any better.

😆 Love it!

There’s also ‘The Whip’ —-> You love control, but you’re a caretaker at heart. You’re the first person people call in an emergency, but you don’t hesitate to give them tough love when they need it. People trust you with the most important things in their lives. You take that responsibility very, very seriously.

And —-> ‘The Sex Swing’ —> You’re a social butterfly. You’re the person everyone calls on Friday night to find out where the party is, and if there isn’t one going on, then you’ll just create one yourself. Besides, you know for a fact that everyone you know will come for it.”

And also —-> ‘The Hitachi Magic Wand’ —-> You’re all class on the outside, but all sass within. Sure, everyone may think that you’re just a mild-mannered person, but that’s because they don’t really know you. If they had any idea what you were really all about, they would be shocked.

When I worked in the Senate, Mike Mansfield was one of the senators from Montana. He was much admired and respected….he was minority leader at the time, with Everett Dirksen as majority leader.
It seems to me that Mansfield was also Ambassador to China once…..is that right Marilyn?

🙂 WTF is wrong with you! Didn’t you learn a thing from our SOS’ for others that were MIA? We pay attention and miss you when you don’t poke your head in from time to time! You must drive your wife nuts!🙂

Somebody needed to say it. I’m not knocking Hillary or anybody else thinking about running but imo it’s a blatant distraction from the immediate task at hand. Win the House hold and hold onto if not expand our majority in the Senate.

They should also be calling out the media too. Dems keeping mute while MSM Screw We The People is Not advancing our form of democracy. The right have their mega echo media chamber and the MSM is there cheering them on and attacking Dems 24/7.

I think the Dems must be reading TOD.😉 I got this in my email today while soliciting for donations…

“Last year, Republicans held their first committee hearing on impeaching President Obama. And now they’re talking about impeachment again.
We can make sure that doesn’t happen again — and get Congress back to work — if we take back the House and protect our Senate majority.”